We are not a game
This kind of crap.
No you’re not, because I for one did say it and you didn’t and you can’t, because you don’t know where I am and because it’s hardly worth it to travel from wherever you are and because there’s no such thing as “period diarrhea” and because if there were you wouldn’t be keeping it in a tub now would you.
Anyway. This. This is why the whole idea is so fucked up. The belief that women can’t function in the world because [gasp] they have periods is one of the pretexts for subordinating and confining us for however many years it’s been. To see fetishizing fantasizing men claiming they’re menstruating and that as a result they’re alternately crying and raging is such a fucking insult, in so many dimensions. It’s as if rich white people liked to put on overalls and straw hats and claim to be picking cotton, while moaning about how their hands are bleeding. It’s also as if rich white people kept tweeting that they were made to sit in the back of the bus and turned away from the polling place because of their skin color.
“Woman” isn’t a costume or a game for men to play and trans women DON’T MENSTRUATE.
Is it ok if I talk shit for a sec? Literally…
Er… except yes there is, for some women. The smooth muscle lining the bowels can react similarly to hormones and prostaglandins that cause the endometrial blood vessels to constrict and the myometrium to contract. E.g.: https://globalnews.ca/news/6273023/what-causes-period-poops/
Depending on the regimen of hormones a person is taking, I could imagine they might experience some similar symptoms (soft stools, as well as emotional/mood effects). Although I’d expect any normal person taking exogenous hormones to ask their doctor to modify their regimen to avoid such symptoms, as I understand it such unpleasantness can also be fetishizes, so *shrug*
Of course, it’s also possible that all that is entirely unrelated to their hormone regimen. Plenty of infections as well as severe stress can cause GI upset of various sorts (including feelings of cramping, gas, and diarrhea), and anyone in such a state would be expected to be somewhat miserable regardless of whether there were direct effects on mood :-/
Yeah, but the fact that there is such a thing as period diarrhea doesn’t mean the trans woman is having period diarrhea. He isn’t having a period, and he’s talking shit about how women act when they have a period, and it’s a shitty thing to do and say. Sorry about all the shit talk with the diarrhea talk…any puns unintentional, but not regretted.
Bleeding = period. The stomach cramps, constipation followed by diarrhoea, the moodiness before are accompanying symptoms.
The thing that annoys me most about this is : women don’t talk about having their period unless it’s an intimate conversation. The only time you would mention it at work is if you need to explain why you are running to the loos every 2 hours and you certainly never tell a man unless he’s your partner.
Transwomen do not know what it’s like being a woman. All of this signalling of how womanly they are just shows how far off the mark they are.
Menstruation is the end result of a hormone cycle (one which is actually fairly unique to humans, as it happens); are these people claiming that their artificial hormone injections are similarly cyclical, or are they magically cycling while always taken on the same schedule? Maybe some of the doses are placebos, like birth control pills?
Or perhaps it’s just fetishistic narcissism all the way down.
@ learie.
I knew when my wife was having her period, she suffered enormous pain almost every cycle. I could tell by the way she gritted her teeth and carried on with family life, by the way should would suddenly stop whatever she was doing and come up short of breath. I saw it, I lived with it, and I would never wish it on another sentient being.
It was NOT a performance, it WAS her “lived experience”. No man in a dress can ever come close to experiencing that pain.
Seth,
I wondered about that too. I am definitely no expert on transgender hormone treatments but, as far as I can find out, they usually take the hormones regularly, so much every single day. It could be that some men deliberately change their hormone dosage on a monthly basis in order to mimic periods.
It is certainly true that some trans-identified men will go to very strange, even creepy, lengths in order to feel that they have periods. Things like frozen tomato juice in their artificial vaginas and wearing used sanitary pads and tampons.
For some women, especially the second two. Cramps (which are below the stomach, naturally, since what is cramping is the uterine wall) are common but the second two are much less so. This matters because, as I mentioned in the post, menstruation is treated as a reason to keep women out of public life.
…there’s a study! I was looking for information about symptoms associated with menstruation and their frequencies, and it seems one has been done (only very recently, which is telling…): https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/applewomenshealthstudy/updates/menstrual-symptom-data-can-help-end-period-stigma/
(…but yeah, while men could experience most of those symptoms, I agree that men certainly shouldn’t attribute them to ovulation or menstruation!)
I often find it confusing when people say “stomach” when they mean “abdomen” or “belly”. Telling a child that a baby is growing in “mommy’s stomach” is probably the worst, but references to pain or a punch or injury in someone’s “stomach” usually requires that I make mental adjustments when I find out what the situation actually is. The usage is common and widely accepted, but still I think of the actual stomach when people say “stomach”.
Sackbut: That kind of, well, synecdoche, I guess, is kind of a hallmark of natural language, frustratingly nonspecific as it may be.
Nullius, similar to when I worked for Social Security Disability, and clients would say “I have nerves”. Of course you do, dear, and you should be glad you do. Of course, what they mean is a nervous disorder, another very non-specific phrase.
The use of nonspecific phrases is indeed a hallmark of natural language, but I don’t know the term for the condition where one is intensely annoyed by such things.
Well, and, hallmark of natural language is all very well but when it’s a matter of argument, precision is not just a frill.
I went to Jr. High, and high school, and college, and grad school, and worked for 30 years with having periods, and the only things I ever did in response were very occasionally to excuse myself for a few minutes, or, when the pain was really bad, go home or stay home. Not a big deal broadcast everywhere to excuse bad behavior.
I missed part of my point, which is that, conversely, I sat through classes and meetings and all kinds of other things while on my period, and functioned the same as on any other day.
iknklast: Good example. Idiomatic expressions that mean something completely different from their literal denotations are everywhere.
“He’s beating a dead horse.” What a monster!
“She’ll have to bite the bullet.” That sounds painful.
“They’re feeling under the weather.” Whuh?
Russian idioms are even more indecipherable.